To Infinity

it is necessary instead to sit down and kinda try and quiet that voice, and then start with considering my physical needs, kinda mentally run through the maslow's pyramid from bottom to top as if I'm dealing with a little kid throwing a tantrum. like, did we sleep last night? have we had lunch? am I lonely? should I call my aunt? do I want to finish the book I've been reading? do I want to boil chicken bones today? what's bothering me? I'll then try out a couple of things that seem likely and while they may not be The Thing it's useful to build momentum anyways.

but like, if I give it space, the answer will float upwards into view and it's usually something I've been putting off for a long-ass time.

and it'll sound So Stupid to the Talking Mind, who has important tasks that it's trying to get done, but we're going to tell that voice that the kitchen will wait while we take down the Christmas tree, fold the laundry that's been in the basket for a week, sketch the idea, call my aunt, whatever it is, and inevitably the Linchpin Task will take about half an hour, and once it's done I can feel the weight lifted off my shoulders.

Linchpin Tasks are sometimes that it's time to deal with The Emotions At The Bottom Of The Pile, which is when a pile of stuff builds up to cover whatever is at the bottom being emotionally fraught. (letters, the shirt I wore the day my grandpa died, y'know, The Emotions)

I've gotten better at identifying when those piles are starting to accrete and dealing with them before they get bad, but like, you gotta be able to identify the pile of stuff your eyeballs keep slipping off because it feels too emotionally difficult to deal with right now, and like, learning to ignore the part of the mind that wants to assign task priority levels is a counter-intuitive way to get things done.

PT: Reminders for this autism acceptance & awareness month. End PT

Listen to Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, and autistic people of colour

Include and listen to medium and high support needs people in your advocacy 

Recognize where you are privileged, and seek to uplift more marginalized autistics rather than speaking for or over them

Remember that nonverbal/nonspeaking and semiverbal/semispeaking are permanent states

Know that the 'r' slur is not yours to use, it was used to harm intellectually disabled people, and folks with IDD’s have repeatedly said it’s not reclaimable

imo way too many people are going through life thinking they're just going to be sensitive to rejection for life because of how some people (not OP, but definitely plenty of ADHD influencers) talk about this "symptom." I don't think it's terribly productive that it gets constantly cordoned off as its own thing. like a lot of ADHD, while it sucks to have it shape your life up to the point you realize what it is, it is indeed possible to exposure therapy & DBT your way out of it.

What conceptualizing RSD as a category of trauma response to social triggers does is allow us to treat it like any other trauma response. It pulls RSD out of the bioessentialist framework and into the realm of injuries that can be treated, learned associations that can be unlearned. It turns out that the same techniques that help with PTSD triggers, including the same damn meds (hi, clonidine), are effective for helping reduce RSD. (It also explains why RSD is also common in autistic people, who often have a similar history of social error and narratives of self blame, without requiring inherent neurological differences.)

It helps to not think of AAC as a set of things and more as a type of communication, one that doesn't necessitate relying on speech.